Thursday, September 27, 2012

In thinking about the term "moochandise" (below) to describe election campaign schwag (prompted by the "O" logo used by the Obama campaign), I reread a few quotes from Ayn Rand about "moochers" and "looters." I came across the following brilliant quote:

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."Atlas Shrugged, page 410-413

— Francisco d'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged

As great as the quote is, it and others like it have confused generations of dim-witted U.S. voters, even those who have read "Atlas Shrugged." I have a better, clearer, more obvious formulation of the quote, with the addition of a few essential words. Here it is: "Run for your life from any man who tells you that earned money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter."

There are people who consider themselves liberals who are essentially liberals in the tradition of Hayek. Such people, at the rare higher intelligence levels, often note that they don't have a problem with money and trade, that they have a problem with stolen money and unfree trade that is protected by force from competition. These are not problems with earned money. ...They are problems with central bank war profiteers who print money from nothing, and use coercive legal tender laws to force individuals to accept it. That isn't earning money, it's stealing it.

Stolen money is the root of all evil. The theft of money allows for the product of theft to be accepted as a representation of labor. The use of money to represent labor (voluntary manual labor or voluntary intellectual labor) is almost universally accepted. However, when money is stolen, it allows value to be claimed by the valueless. Something that is normally acceptable to all (money earned by free trade, and free trade itself: the exchange of labor for a representation of labor) is then often reinvested in the marketplace of theft, the political marketplace.

Most people only see the evil of that reinvestment (lobbying, campaign contributions that go to the biggest looter and wealth redistributor, payment of political favors, payment to coercive government institutions, payment to social engineering government programs, payment to world-government projects of the central bankers, payment to set up schemes that loot the productive --such as carbon credit trading). This gives rise to narrow-minded socialist liberals rejecting the concept of money, when what they should be doing is pointing out the massiveness of the theft involved in fiat money.

In a way, fiat currency is the laundering of labor. Imagine that the central bank prints a billion dollars and uses that freshly printed money to pay armed DEA stormtroopers to raid an apartment full of hippies who were growing marijuana in their apartment. The marijuana was a good and the sale of that marijuana was a service. That good and that service are taken off the market, by force. The lives of the marijuana growers are then violated, as are all their freedoms under the now defunct and legally non-existent "Bill of Rights." The apartment is now vacant, and perhaps months of rent is not paid. Nobody wins from this naked aggression.

But when the agents who were paid for the raid are paid, they receive something that falsely appears to be a "representation of labor."

There would be very few people saying "money is the root of all evil," if there was a free market in money.

So, how is there not a free market in money? Can't an individual still buy gold and silver coins?

Well, yes and no. The government doesn't like it when you're very successful at buying gold and silver coins, which is why they created the "legal tender laws." If your gold and silver coins become very popular, you will be raided by government stormtroopers, and they will confiscate your belongings. They will confiscate your computers, your gold and silver, your customer records, and your entire physical plant, including the real-estate your business occupies. That is precisely what happened to Bernard von Nothaus, the originator of the Liberty Dollar.

The federal tax code, as enforced by the IRS and U.S. Treasury, is unconstitutional and "null and void" and only enforceable via criminal action by a criminal government ("All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution, are null and void." Chief Justice Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 5, U.S. (Cranch) 137, 174,176.). you will be targeted for arrest and put in prison, like Irwin Schiff was. Irwin's crime was speech, which makes him a political prisoner whose only crime was civil disobedience to illegitimate and unconstitutional "laws."

The AOCS (American Open Currency Standard) has not yet been raided, but they are not yet as large and successful as the Liberty Dollar was. Since the AOCS also represent a means of U.S. citizens escaping the loss of their life-savings via inflation, it is likely they too will eventually be targeted by government aggression, once they have enough money to make it worth stealing. By this coercion and theft, the government generates stolen money, not earned money. It is "stolen" because it is an inferior product, competitors are not allowed to compete with it, and all people in the U.S. and world economy are forced to transact business with it. U.S. citizens (more properly termed "submitizens" since a citizen has a say in the form of law and government he lives within, whereas a "submitizen" lives under the laws of the central bank --as all residents of the USA currently do) are forced to use the U.S. dollar as a representation of their labor.

By forcing someone to represent their labor with low-cost pieces of paper that only one small group of people (central bankers) has control over, everyone is stolen from to the extent that the bankers mint excess currency, and divert it to programs that are not voluntarily purchased on the free market. I didn't voluntarily pay stormtroopers to raid and imprison Irwin Schiff --the treasury printed money to do that. I didn't pay stormtroopers to raid peaceful marijuana growers, forcing the trade of marijuana into a violent black market, --the treasury printed money to do that. I didn't pay stormtroopers to raid Bernard von Nothaus's "Liberty Dollar," or federal prosecutors to overstep their bounds, persecute, and imprison him with a prosecution-rigged jury --the treasury printed money to do that. So, the people who print the money can use that money to redirect labor, even though their act of printing the money via a government-enforced monopoly is actually subtractive to the representation of labor. This is true both because government enforcement interferes with all other forms of labor, and because the act of printing the money inflates the currency (at zero labor cost to the printer).

So what about all the constructive goods and services the dollar pays for?

...I did buy groceries with money that the treasury also printed, (because I was afraid of being raided by government stormtroopers for "violating the legal tender laws" if I used an alternate currency). So, if I said to the grocery store owner, "Money is the root of all evil" he would rightfully look at me as if I was, myself, evil (unless he fully comprehends the nature of fiat currency, and its full propensity for government manipulation. At which point, he still would not know how I was interpreting the term. Possibly, I have a stupid socialist conception of money, or possibly I have a high-level comprehension of money, or a mix of both. In short, language doesn't serve to make us political allies in this situation. ...Simply qualifying the statement as "Stolen money is the root of all evil" quickly clears up this source of frequent and great misunderstanding.). After all, the money I gave to him paid for the producers of tomatoes, canned beans, foreign luxuries like dark chocolate, etc... That money also paid him to feed, clothe, house, and school his family. So, when the money is used to represent labor such as that, as well as my labor which paid for the groceries, it is the root of all good. It is the root of "finding ways in which we can voluntarily interact with each other," as well as voluntarily distribute goods and services. Earned money is the mechanism that allows pricing to work.

When central bankers print money, they are not earning it. They are using positions of privilege to extort the ability to create "money" out of thin air. After the money (representation of labor) is stolen this way, it then goes into the economy and is earned, but at a lower economic hierarchical level than the purpose it was printed for. So, the greatest masses of money (previously possessed only by the most productive members of society,, before the Federal Reserve Act and later, when there was a perception that the dollar was at least marginally-related to gold) are now increasingly possessed by the least productive, most-thieving members of society. As the Federal Reserve tries to bail out failing institutions, their immense but unearned responsibility (irresponsibility) for stabilizing the market via harsh decisions will more obviously fail.

Without the legal tender laws, I would have traded a gold or silver coin to the grocer, because that currency would be in common circulation, since it always outperforms the dollar, long-term. The value of that coin would have fluctuated in terms of foreign fiat currencies, or even the government's own quasi-governmental fiat currency. But it would be easy for the same computerized apparatus that lists price changes in terms of dollars in the grocery store to list price fluctuations in terms of weights of gold, silver, and copper. (A one ounce silver coin is now worth approximately $30 in Federal Reserve Notes, and pre-1965 U.S. quarters and dimes are approximately 71% silver, and can easily be used as silver money.) One gram pieces of gold are already sold in foreign airports, bonded to plastic cards from which they can be easily collected at a later date, if need be. Therefore, as a representation of labor, gold and silver are very good, because they can never lose their core values, as scarce industrial metals or jewelry metals.

The great hope of the future is in the use of bitcoins, or an even more advanced future form of digital currency, whose value is measured in terms of network connectivity or computer power (perhaps calculations-per-second), or via evolving parallel institutions that make the enforcement of the legal tender laws impossible. The discussion of "countereconomics" in Samuel Konkin III's "The New Libertarian Manifesto," explores options for increasing individual liberty that do not involve electoral participation (he was morally opposed to voting). The following books also reveal further options for increasing individual freedom, (typically without Konkin's opposition to effective pro-freedom electoral participation, and sometimes exploiting synergy with it): Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, We, The Jury, Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine, An Essay on the Trial By Jury, The Freedom Outlaw's Handbook.

The singularity or economic catastrophe will ultimately kill the enslaving institution of central banking, if it hasn't already been killed by those who love individual freedom. Hopefully, us human-level intelligences will get to enjoy some time free from fiat currency for some simple mammalian pleasures. A positive first step would be to demand passage of Ron Paul's Free Competition in Currency Act. If this act is not passed, you will continue to be looted, and your life savings redirected to socialist boondoggles and active violence against the innocent.

King, I bought and read most of your books when I was in 6th grade, and I enjoyed them. ...But you don't know dick about politics, the Federal Reserve, or the way what's left of "America" really works. Have some respect for Henry David Thoreau, Lysander Spooner, Frederick Douglass, and the long tradition of political nonaggression that came before you. Crack a book, read some Hayek, read some Harry Browne. Re-read Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government." The opening paragraph could just as well be about the Mexican DRUG War, as the Mexican War Thoreau was discussing.

When it comes to government, you don't get to decide how your tax dollars are spent.

When it comes to the private sector, you can always "opt out."

You acknowledge that the last 4 administrations have been "anti-business." Then, you bitch about there not being enough "regulation." LOL! Regulation sidesteps that core foundation of American jurisprudence, THE JURY. We, the jury, to be precise. We, the randomly-selected (in rare instances when a proper jury is called and seated, without prosecutorial stacking in "voir dire") people, who comprise the 4th branch of government.

So, what does the government do for me, that the private sector cannot? NOTHING. I am poor, and I don't want to give one red cent to the government. It is insulting to you to assume that because you're so dumb you think you're getting a great deal from the government that someone who is less well off can't be better-informed about the value they're getting from their dollar in government services. If you want to pay more, YOU CAN.

And what will your tax dollar buy? It will firstly,. buy things you cannot choose NOT to buy. The government is not Burger King, and you don't get to pick and choose what you want. My tax dollar will go to put my friends in jail, for victimless crimes. It will go to enforce the drug and gun laws on a horribly racist and classist basis. It will go for foreign wars of aggression that do nothing to keep me safe, and everything to piss off insane theocrats on the other side of the globe. It will go to crappy government schools that do a far worse job of educating our young than WIKIpedia does --to the extent that not one person in 1,000 can tell me how the Federal Reserve functions, or how jury trials are supposed to function. My tax dollars will deny gays equal marriage rights, and will put sex stores out of business. My tax dollars will harass comic book artists like Mike Diana, and musicians like the Dead Kennedys, in the name of christian theocratic values that directly contradic the First Amendment to the US Constitution. My tax dollars will be pissed away on pork-barrel projects in every state, all of which are less efficient than any private-sector provision of services that comes with a price tag, and the option of voiding contract for nonproduction. In short, because government is coercion, and this nation walked away from the idea of "a government by consent" when it passed the Federal Reserve Act into law, government services do not need to be competitive in any way with private sector services.

So what did I miss? Oh yeah, the FDA claims the right to actively deny me life-saving treatments, so innocent people can die young and in terrible pain while moronic fucks like you complain that you --and everyone else-- are not being forcible deprived of enough of their income. Watch a youtube video where Stephen Badylak shows that his lab can regrow every human organ, and replace it surgically with adult stem cells, then listen to him talk about how the life-saving procedures are being held up by the FDA, which may or may not give us slaves PERMISSION to save our own lives with his procedures. ...Since when did a free people need permission to engage in risking their own lives in order to save them? Since when were manufacturers not allowed --by the First Amendment-- to print "sweetened with stevia" on food products? (1986, when Donald Rumsfeld's "Searle & Associates" successfully lobbied the FDA to destroy natural competitors to Nutrasweet, that's when! Result: 150,000 type II diabetics per year dead from bad diet and a scientifically incorrect food pyramid taught to them in gradeschool.) Since when did the FDA get the right to hold up AIDS research and development for years while Big Pharma milked the gay and African communities for their patented "slow death" drugs? They never had any right to do any of this.

If you pay one dollar extra in taxes, not only will I not commend you for your "civic duty," I'll spit on your good name for being a naive, willing dupe of powerful, sociopathic prohibitionists.

America is a nation where the collective isn't supposed to steal from the individual, nor bar the individualist from following his dreams. But that's what the U.S. government does. Then, it tries, in a half-assed manner to undo some small amount of the damage it itself caused, and its lapdog liberal "popular intellectuals" come to its defense like whipped dogs.

Go back to writing books about rabid dogs that just want to be obedient, it seems you know a lot more about that than what it means to hold an American ideology.

And while you're at it, don't bother taking out your checkbook to end the drug war, or the foreign wars, or to pay an insignificant amount of the $16T Federal Debt (not including untenable outstanding liabilities of over $58T). You're right: that won't solve the problem --just like even taxing 100% of your income wouldn't solve the problem. The only thing that would solve the problem would be you coming to your senses, and being one more voice of truth, telling the young to drop out of the system, withold their support, and begin building the parallel institutions that will leave the American Police State in the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

About Me

I am a marketer of financial services, and I oppose the Federal Reserve System, because I oppose forced servitude (slavery). I don't want to work for the Federal Reserve. I don't want my labor to help prop up any government. As such, I've grown very hungry for a free market that does not make me the unwilling accomplice of coercion. I'm also someone who continuously seeks to move to an environment containing a greater number of options. An environment that contains more options is called a "market". The term "market" is a broad designation that contains all choices and incentives (positive and negative) to exercise those choices. There are many synonyms for "alternatives" to the market. Here are a few: statism, collectivism, coercion, bullying, tyranny, dictatorship, totalitarianism, unfreedom, "mixed economy", socialism, communism, fascism, democracy, republicanism, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, conservatism, liberalism, theft. These are all terms that are synonymous or at least aspects of the same thing.